


Hue

by breathedout



Series: Passchendaele ficlets [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Adolescence, Author is also glad she is no longer 16 years old, F/F, O Canada, Passionate Friendship, Ridiculously Pastoral, Socioeconomic gap, Young Love, literal roll in the hay, visual art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 00:17:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17652452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathedout/pseuds/breathedout
Summary: Outside Antigonish, Nova Scotia: June, 1877In the tall hay Katherine set up her little easel, and then positioned Rebecca.





	Hue

**Author's Note:**

> The folks over at [femslashficlets](https://femslashficlets.dreamwidth.org/) on Dreamwidth are hosting a year-long, 15-ficlet challenge where all the prompts are Janelle Monáe lyrics. I'm using them to create a little cycle of exercises using characters from the three established or hinted-at f/f pairings in the original novel I'm working on. So all of these tiny character studies will be related to one another, and all except three of them will be either Louise/Hazel, Rebecca/Katherine, or Emma/Maisie. Anyone interested in getting to know my characters a little bit as I flesh them out is welcome to follow along!
> 
> This story was written for the prompt "These eyes long to make you a perfect work of art."

"Here?" Rebecca called. "You'd said—with this tree?"

Hardly subtle, Katherine thought, amused. Rebecca hadn't even anything to carry. Not like Katherine with her supplies slung over her back. That was as may be; but even Rebecca's sun-hat looked limp, dangling in her hand. The dark line from her nape down the back of her white dress. _Salt_ , Katherine thought; and she swallowed. 

"No, no," she called back. "The tree's all wrong when you're wearing _that_. Blue is what it wants. And in the autumn. Today we're for open fields, or the sea."

It would be the fields, Katherine knew: Rebecca, now turned forward again and trudging on, would falter long before they reached the water. But it was a kind of stick to the carrot of the McGillivray land, acres of hay not yet turned to brown. In that rolling green, Rebecca'd look almost as lovely as she'd have done against white-crested blue. 

Katherine paused to shift the strap across her shoulder. Up ahead, Rebecca was nearing the place where the woods opened out, so that the sun striped her as she walked. Her hair, Katherine thought, half-startled: it was darker than she'd have painted from memory. In the shade, now, it looked full brown; though still the patches of sunlight conjured a ghost of the gold it had used to be. Surely, even last summer—

"Well?" Rebecca said, turning. "Are you coming?" so Katherine shook off the picture of a Rebecca yellow-haired as she remembered her, and hurried to join her as she was. 

In the long grass, under the trees at the edge of the McGillivray field, they collapsed next to one another. From her pack Katherine pulled Mrs. Landry's neat-wrapped packets of bread and meat. They tore into them, Katherine's breath still loud in her ears. 

After, they wandered. A quarter mile across the field was a place where the only trees were a dark-green smear just at the northern horizon. In the tall hay Katherine set up her little easel and then positioned Rebecca: lowered her to her knees; spread out her skirts around her before sitting her all the way down. She took her sun-hat; Rebecca squinted up. 

"Will that be dreadful?" Katherine said. 

"Picturesque girls don't think to bring hats, you suppose?" said Rebecca, smiling; and Katherine laughed, giving it back to her.

"Before you—just. Let me," she said, and knelt facing Rebecca, reaching over her shoulder to untie the hair-ribbon binding together her braids. The skin of Rebecca's neck stuck, damp, to Katherine's inner arms. Braids unjoined, she scooped them over Rebecca's shoulders, to fall in heavy amber ropes against her chest. A fieldfare trilled, _shik-shik-shik-shik-shak, shak_ , as Katherine loosened them. Tresses slipping over her fingers, and between. When Rebecca's hair hung in a rippling gilded mass, Katherine sat back to look. 

"All right?" Rebecca said. Her voice was slow; lazy. Katherine felt she could taste it: trickling down the back of her throat, lodging low in her stomach. 

"Hmm," she said. But she reached forward to tuck the left side back over Rebecca's shoulder. Rebecca's neck was so long, Katherine thought. When they'd been children, it'd made her look like a turtle. 

"I should paint you in pearls," Katherine said. 

"Pearls!" Sleepy, sun-drenched, Rebecca's eyebrows lifted. "Where am I meant to get such a thing?"

"Your mother doesn't have some?"

"Kate," Rebecca said, suddenly serious, her hand on Katherine's elbow and her eyes summer-green as they'd always been, green as the horizon. "I think—I'm afraid you think Mama's some kind of— _heiress_ or something, just because she—I don't know, makes us sandwiches, and—"

"No," Katherine said. She laughed: it was only that the idea of the white, wrapped about Rebecca's throat—. "Don't worry," she said; and her fingers curled against Rebecca's nape, and she leaned forward: knees digging into the dirt. 

Rebecca's lips were over-warm, rough from her biting them; her face tacky-damp against Katherine's fingertips. She made a surprised little noise, her whole frame stiffening and then—she _sighed_. Pressed back, her mouth so earnest, so strong against Katherine's; her hand coming up to clutch at Katherine's hip through her stained old painting-smock, a year too small.

The soil, and the sun. They kissed with Katherine's hands in Rebecca's long darkening-gold hair, the breeze-caught hay tickling at the skin it found. Katherine's knees ached against the earth until Rebecca, with a little— _plea_ , almost; almost a cry—pulled her down on top of her, falling back into the shelter of the weeds. That sound, Katherine thought. She felt— _ungoverned_ , all the places she pressed her mouth: Rebecca's throat; the inside of her elbow; her sticky sun-pinked face; thinking of pearls and of gold as all the strange lost sounds Rebecca made vibrated through her and echoed, _aching_ and then Rebecca with her hands on Katherine's hips under her skirts crooked her knee up between Katherine's legs and Katherine rolled back against her, and against her, _against her_ —

"You'll have pearls someday," Katherine said, later, breathless still, head pillowed on Rebecca's chest. She clung to her, in truth. Feeling as if the earth might tilt her off, were she to let go. 

"You think so?" Rebecca said. 

"When I'm a—world-famous artist." Hardly knowing what she said. "I'll buy them for you myself." 

Rebecca laughed. Her fingers petting, petting at Katherine's hair.

"And I shall give them to you in a black box," Katherine said, "with gold ribbon," forcing herself up on one elbow however the world turned. Below her Rebecca bit her lip, smiling. "And I'll paint you in your loveliest gown. Green velvet, with your hair all pinned up. Gloves to the elbow."

The sun slanted low now across Rebecca's face. Across her eyelashes, and her mouth, and the field. The woods would be darker yet, and Katherine cared not a whit. Rebecca's eyes were so soft, looking up at her.

"All right," Rebecca said, and she pulled her down, gentle, to rest against her chest.

**Author's Note:**

> This whole story is not exactly a Frost reference, but it's not NOT a Frost reference.
> 
> (Also, repeating: I'm listing Rebecca's character tag as "Rebecca Landry Thompson," her married name, because I don't want to end up with multiple character tags, despite the fact that at this point she has obviously not yet picked up the Thompson.)


End file.
